Hi Valentina. I’m so sorry to hear about your kitty, but I also feel the need to defend the vets you have seen. They are almost always under great time pressure, and in fact, the use of Convenia is often cheaper than using an injection of another drug plus tablets or drops to follow. For nearly all of them, it’s more that they honestly believe that this is the best treatment and the one that is most likely to work. I can promise you that no vet anywhere wants to use something that would cause harm. Whether it did in this case is of course impossible to prove, but I’m not letting the drug off the hook either as you can see from the article.

Convenia killed my cat too. She had 13 symptoms from the Pfizer/Zoetis UK research. It’s reported in Zoetis leaflet. First vet who gave my cat Convenia without me knowing, gave her Depo-Medrol to counteract the allergic reaction from Convenia which made her worse. Second vet said she had a drug eruption. He gave her fluid therapy, but she was too far gone. The Convenia had killed her good bacteria and she was turning to stone. And she could’t move, her mouth was agape, and she could hardly breathe. She died a day later. The first vet ruined my trust in vets forever. I know you’re one of the good ones, but there is no consequence’s for the bad ones. They just do what ever the drug sales reps tell them to do.
Money, money, money, mon-ney.

Hi Leigh. It certainly sounds plausible, given the timing and what I assume was the absence of any other health problems except urinary issues. Of course, in any individual case, it’s impossible to prove that the drug caused the death. In his case, if it did happen so fast, I would assume that any penicillin derivative would have done the same. Your experience brings up one of my other problems with the use of antibiotics here: most cats (especially male ones) with the signs of a UTI do not actually have an infection.

This killed my healthy 6 year old cat. He was given this injection for a UTI, came home, ran upstairs, and fell over dead.

Hi Venus. You are right that I said we should not be giving antibiotics routinely for urinary tract infections, but that’s because the vast majority of these cases are not caused by bacteria. You can find more information by searching for cystitis on our website, but the treatment of this disease is more about controlling environmental factors than in using antibiotics. Of course, there are exceptions where antibiotics will be necessary, which I see more commonly in elderly cats. It’s not that the use of antibiotics themselves is harmful, it’s just that it’s not the best treatment most of the time.

Thank you for your reply. I did look back on more medical records of Zeus and found that on October 11th he was diagnosed with UTI and the vet did give him his first convenia shot then (the second one was April 7th and third was April21st.) she then did lab work October 13th and the 14th came back with results, found something wrong with his kidneys and was worried, i heard back on my voicemail messages for that one… but then after that he was fine, he was eating and drinking fine, peeing and pooping good and we didnt think anything else was wrong, we were going to take him back to vet to do more diagnostics but she decided he didnt need fluids or anything else if he was back on track… and he put back the weight he had lost so we thought he was back to normal until the anal gland issues which now i believe it must have started in december but didnt know which cat was bleeding until we caught it was Zeus in February/March around there. by then i think whatever was wrong was too late. was it the convenia shot because he got it when he had a UTI that made it worse and downhill from there? or was he doomed for kidney failure no matter what and not anything to do with the shot because it was kidney issues left untreated? I ask because your article says it should not be given for UTI issues. he did not have crystals in his urine the vet said from what urninalysis test back in october revealed so that wasnt the issue, it was just a urinary tract infection and was given the prasozin and convenia on october 11th. i just find it odd she did the blood work after the shot on october 13th and the result was not good for kidney, could the shot have had an effect on the results? and should it not been given for the UTI? i am trying to figure out if any of this had to do with the end results on May 13th and was it spiral down hill from there. also i wanted another cbc done for him in May after the ultrasound but i couldnt afford it from the emergency vet bill was already insane, only could afford from our regular vet but she didnt want to do it yet because the results would be tainted by the steroids that were already prescribed to him after the emergency vet visit. i think they all misdiagnosed him for the cancer, we really dont think it was cancer after viewing the medical records now and listening back to the messages the vets left us when giving back lab results, we think it was kidney issues left untreated that may or may not have contributed to the convenia. i wish we would’ve had more lab work done before May 13th and after October 13th, the in between months, would that have saved him? at least to prepare for treatments? what do you think now about it because of the UTI?

My other cat has had many UTI issues in the past too and he’s okay now with it but if it’s not safe to give it in case he got another one sometime in future i want to be prepared and say no to that antibiotic. what antibiotic should be used instead for UTI then?

Hi Venus. What you’ve been told is not exactly correct; the drug can be used at 14 day intervals – although it stays in the system for much longer, it is at too low a dose to be effective in most cats. Therefore, it needs to be repeated to maintain blood levels when it is required. As for kidney disease, this is not a common side-effect of antibiotics in this class, and personally I would not think it was related to the Convenia.

You reason you not the only person in the world. LOL my guy just because u never had a problem doesn’t mean there aren’t hundreds who have.

You sound like a Bonefied sheep, “personally my vet has been using Convenia in all types of animals and the biggest side effect? Soreness or tiredness” even if u work in the vet office….With all those treated animals you do NOT know how they all reacted . especially if the pet parents never came back